Church (ἐκκλησία, lit. “assembly”). The Byz. did not develop a systematic ecclesiology. Instead, for them the church was a sacramental communion that included not only the earthly oikoumene but the Kingdom of Heaven as well, with angels, saints, and God himself: in the words of Isidore of Pelousion (PG 78:685A), a “union of saints hammered out of true faith and perfect behavior.” In general, however, the Byz. church rejected the claims of Donatism and Montanism, whose followers sought to exclude sinners from membership in the church. Sanctity and unity were considered basic features of the church, contrasted with the multiplicity and falsity of paganism and heresy. The unity of the church was underlined by such epithets as katholike (general) and oikoumenike (universal), and its dogmatic correctness by the epithet orthodoxos (of right belief).

Administration of the church was based on patristic texts and the canons of ecumenical and local councils, codified beginning in the 6th C. and regularized in the Nomokanon of Fifty Titles. The Byz. church did not have a single head, rejecting the idea of papal primacy, but embraced the concept of pentarchy in which patriarchs and the pope maintained administrative control of their individual territory. In fact, the loss of the East to the Arabs in the 7th C. and the separation of the West made the patriarch of Constantinople the de facto head of the Byz. church. The Byz. defended the concept that the authority of the council was superior to the power of the patriarch; in an extreme form, an anonymous treatise of the 10th C. tried to justify the superiority of an assembly of metropolitans over the patriarch of Constantinople (Darrouzès, infra 24–29). On the contrary, Niketas of Amaseia defended the thesis that the patriarch was the supreme arbiter in the ecclesiastical sphere. With regard to the state, theoreticians insisted that the church was superior to the civil administration (e.g., John Chrysostom, PG 61:507.42–43), in contrast to the attempt of the state to treat the emperor as the supervisor (“bishop”) of the church’s external affairs. The author of the Epanagoge presented the theory of two equal powers, that of the emperor, who deals with material matters, and that of the patriarch, responsible for mankind’s spiritual health and salvation. In practice, however, civil administration usually had the upper hand over the church.

As an institution, the church possessed an established organization based on a hierarchy of rank (bishop, priest, deacon, etc.), on administrative gradations (patriarchate-metropolis-bishopric, etc.), on regular assemblies (councils), and on the system of ecclesiastical officials. Its privileges included a special canon law distinct from civil law, and various exemptions for the clergy. The church obtained jurisdiction over the clergy and in some matters over the laity. Its material basis consisted of the ownership of land, imperial grants ( solemnia), movable property (esp. liturgical vessels and vestments), and voluntary donations and bequests; the mandatory tithe was a relatively late innovation. Ecclesiastical property was in theory inalienable, and attempts to confiscate it aroused serious conflicts (e.g., the case of Leo of Chalcedon).

Being a holy body, the church could expel sinful members, both temporarily and permanently (by means of excommunication). Missions expanded the church’s influence by spreading Christianity to new territories, baptizing heathens and heretics, and converting Jews and Muslims. The Byz. church had no monopoly on education, but it obtained supervision over teaching and offered episcopal posts to many outstanding scholars. Its means of salvation were challenged by some mystics who, like Symeon the Theologian, considered the individual path of vision of the divine light as superior to the activity of the institutionalized church. The political role of individual bishops was significant in secular affairs, but the influence of episcopal organization had to compete with monasteries (see Monasticism) that often managed to obtain independence from local bishops ( stauropegion) and even from the patriarch.

Ecclesiology (ἐκκλησιολογία), a modern term to designate the study of the nature of the church. In Greek patristic literature and Byz. apologetic and dogmatic surveys, the church was never an object of systematic theological speculation. This lack of ecclesiological development, however, was not deliberate for the church was ultimately the context of all theology, the presupposition of all theological speculation. Besides, the church as a sociological phenomenon, as a visible institution with its own administrative structure and unity within the framework of the empire, was frequently the object of conciliar and imperial legislation. Texts such as the Nomokanon of Fourteen Titles, the Epanagoge with its theory of the two powers, and the canonical corpus of the Council in Trullo are in fact a rich source of information on church structure, discipline, and ecclesiological ideas. Equally, practical problems generated by canon law, such as the relationship between ecclesiastical and imperial legislation, were often the object of debate by canonists (cf. Balsamon, PG 104:981B–C).

In addition, from the 11th C. various authors dealt extensively with such issues as the prerogatives of a metropolitan and his relationship to the patriarch, right of appeal, celibacy, the functions of the patriarch as president of the synod, canonical questions raised by the Arsenite schism, and episcopal or clerical elections, depositions, ordinations, and resignations. Another essentially ecclesiological problem was of course the debate over primacy (cf. pentarchy). The church’s understanding of itself as an institution did not, however, emphasize structure or juridical categories exclusively, for these, it was realized, could never adequately exhaust or define the ultimate reality of the church as a divine and earthly community.

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